


gone are the days bonfires make me think of you

by BeatnikFreak



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Canon Era, Death and pain all topped off with a bit more death, Enjolras is a bonfire, Grantaire pov, I dunno but I feel I should explaom, M/M, Pain, That last tag is a metaphor he's not a literal bonfire, angst everywhere, the Final Battle, this is just horrible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-26
Updated: 2013-09-26
Packaged: 2017-12-27 17:43:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/981787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeatnikFreak/pseuds/BeatnikFreak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras is a fire that Grantaire will let himself be consumed by. For noone should die alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	gone are the days bonfires make me think of you

**Author's Note:**

> I dunno where this came from but I was listening to Silver Moons by Sunset Rubdown and this happened. I'm so sorry.

He could have told you this would happen. He knew it would. He knew they were going to their deaths, wasting their lives on a fool’s errand.

And he’d told them so. He’d told them until he was blue in the face, until his tobacco-tarred lungs threatened to give out. And none of them listened. None of his wonderful, beautiful friends listened. And so he drank. He drank, because it was the only way to drown his horror, to damp the flames of pain that threatened to engulf him even before this debacle began.

He had tried so hard to believe, to believe that this revolution had a way of succeeding, or, at least, a denouement that didn’t end in their deaths. And with Enjolras at their head, it was easier to fool himself. With that blond oriflamme leading them, he could believe for a moment. One could hardly not believe in the man.

He could no sooner not believe in Enjolras than Enjolras could see him for anything more than a drunk. But there was the way of things. Hephaestus in the shadows, or perhaps Dionysus. Nothing in comparison to Apollo, to that shining marble with his Senecan voice.

But Bahorel was dead now. Strong, brave Bahorel was dead, and his laughing mistress would laugh no more.  
And surely now they would all follow, every last one of them. Every single one of his beautiful friends would die here, and for what? Enjolras would die on the wreckage of his cause, and he would weep.

He would weep for them all.

He could hear the shouts from outside, the horrendous clamour of battle that should not have come to these streets, nor to these boys. Names and curses and pleas - oh, god, the pleas.

His friends - his shining, bright friends - were fighting outside, going to their deaths for a cause he’d never been able to believe in. They could have run, could have run before the bootsteps of the National Guard rang across the cobbles, sounding their death knell…

But here they remained. Here, in the street outside their beloved Corinthe, these friends of the ABC waited for their inevitable deaths.

And he remained too, for he would not leave them. He could not fight - Enjolras had made that clear too many times - but he could stay with them. He could do that much, burnt by the flame of belief and branded by love; for his friends (for Enjolras).

It was like dying himself. He could not die for their cause but it would surely kill him to hear his friends die, to hear them martyred on their lonely barricade.

He took a long drink. The wine had run out now, his bottle half filled with a vivid green. The world was blurring around him, a kaleidoscope of colour and acrid smoke and noise. Oh god, the noise.

It was as if hell itself had been loosed, loosed upon these poor boys who had so much more to give than this.  
He took another drink, the room tipping on its axis. It ought to be upside down, burning, the very seams of the world rent by bullet and bayonet and belief.

A window shattered, spattering glass and grapeshot across the wine-stained boards. Perhaps he’d get lucky and one of these bullets would take him out, take him instead of his poor friends, take him so he wouldn’t be left alone at the end of all of this.

From outside, he heard a distinctive shout. “To the right, to the right!”

Enjolras. Enjolras, about to be crucified on his barricade, marble limbs spread in a pool of his own blood, his passion pouring away down through the cobbles.  
He drained the bottle, looking away from the window.

This would kill him, there was no doubt of that.

The world blurred ever further, and he fell forward, face pressing hard into the wooden table.

Violent, luridly coloured dreams were no comfort, vivid nightmares of noise and dust and god, that smell, that awful smell of blood and cordite, ripping through his nostrils.

Voices chimed through his dreams, screams and yells and his friends. His friends. He saw them die, their voices ripping through absinthe visions, over and over and over again in hazes of drink and despair.  
  
Bahorel fell, over and over, Feuilly at his side, the fight still in their faces.  
  
Bossuet and Joly were cut to ribbons, then blown up, then bayoneted again, every which way and their Musichetta howled.  
  
Courfeyrac took enough bullets for him and Combeferre besides, his friend lanced through his peaceful heart, and then it swapped, over and over, kaleidoscoping through every possible permutation of damnation.  
  
Marius fell before he could say his amour’s name again, sleeping in a pool of his own heart’s making, flowers all around.  
  
Jehan’s voice wavered in lonely space, a black room, empty and windowless.  
  
Enjolras was thrown back, riddled with shots, a call to arms still on his lips, shattered marble antiquities around him.  
  
And the birds, the birds kept singing in his dreams, wheeling over the chaos below.  
  
Starting awake, he knew not how much time had passed. Silence rang through the room, silence more dreadful than anything that had come before.  
  
All his friends were dead. That was all it could mean. It was over, and he had not even managed to drink himself to death. Oh, that would be his lot, to be left alone, the cynic proved right in every way he wished he hadn’t.  
  
He raised his head, vision swimming into resolution.  
  
The sunlight from the window cut brutal shadows across the backs of the National Guardsmen, their faces out of sight but surely blinded by the man in the corner, standing proud and upright, a bloodstained banner still flying.  
  
Scarlet dripped down this Greek hero, this Apollo’s face, features set with resolution against the sun in the broken window, hair aflame in the light. His useless carbine hung in one hand, chest presented to the guns.  
  
Enjolras would die for his cause. He always would have.  
  
And he had no desire to see it happen, not in front of his eyes, not metres away from him. He would not see him die and be left behind.

He would not see him die alone. Noone should die alone, and certainly not Apollo on earth. Not Enjolras.  
  
He would not let him die alone.   
  
Something called him to his feet, pulled him upright, dragged him into motion, put words on his cracked and alcohol-tasting lips. Fire, perhaps.  
  
"Long live the republic!"  
  
He pushed forward, looking only at the man he would have followed anywhere. Enjolras’ face took on a new light, flaming ever brighter. He was not just a light. He was a veritable bonfire, burning like glory and hope and revolution in the dusty corner of this old wine shop.  
  
"I’m with them." And it was true; he had always been with them, with his friends who surely lay dead below. He was with them, and he would die with them. With Enjolras.  
  
He reached his leader, his Euryalus, and stopped at his side. Where he would always have chosen to be, consumed by the flames.  
  
"Two of us, at one shot," he said, conviction that had never before been there ringing in his voice. The truth of his words assailed him as he turned to Enjolras.  
  
His beautiful face glowed, burning with a fierce light that outshone any fear that hid in his eyes. Enjolras was his belief personified in that moment, in that shining moment before the end came, and the cynic was grateful that he had woken when he did, if only to see the recognition, the gratitude in the revolutionary's eyes. If only to stop him from dying alone.   
  
"Do you permit it?" he asked.  
  
The flame that was Enjolras flared one last, beautiful time as he smiled, taking his hand.

The fingers shook slightly in his, before Grantaire, becoming someone, squeezed them, and they steadied, before returning the pressure as the guns clicked.  
  
Grantaire held his hand tightly, his only act of courage that his Apollo would ever see burning him up, burning him to ash in the glorious flame that was Enjolras. Here, at the end of everything, they were not alone. They burned together, here, in front of the guns.  
  
Grantaire's smile was the truest it had ever been.


End file.
